


Fray

by CharismaticAlpaca



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Flash Fic, Minor Violence, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 10:00:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13338858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharismaticAlpaca/pseuds/CharismaticAlpaca
Summary: Written for a friend who sent a message reading "HAWKE RUNNING OUT OF MANA" "AND HITTING WITH HER STICK"Veryshort slaver-fighting feels.





	Fray

Hawke pressed her back against a slab of stone, and there wasn’t a chance the slaver missed her doing it.

She took a breath so deep it made her chest ache--a second, a third--before the rock grew cold against her. Painfully so, against what of her little exposed skin touched it. A moment later she had to push away and raise her own staff to fire back at the mage who was blasting her hiding place with ice.

The ball of flame burst out from the tip, smoking through the driving rain, exploding on the slaver’s chest. He fell back, but caught himself on another stone. 

Likely, the rain made her choice spells less effective. Damn, it was hard to think when she was running this low. Her limbs shook, her arms barely solid enough to lift the staff over her head. The constant buzzing in her head became harder to ignore by the second. When she and Fenris had run into the third pack of them, clustered around a map that was sheltered by some tilted stones, she’d already been starting to fray at the edges.

A wet crunch a few meters away. Fenris had cleft through something. Someone. A limb, a torso--and just out of view. How unfair. 

The one standing across from her raised his own staff. She saw the energy gather at the tip before the spell could even flicker into being. A slight bend in either the light or reality, a crackle that she half-heard and half-felt. Something like iron in the air, on her lips. He was nowhere near empty. 

She flung herself behind the stone again, careful not to let any skin touch it again, let she rip it off like a boy licking a lamppost in winter. Her boots skidded in the sand, leaving her too close to off-balance. Her muscles shuddered when she corrected herself. Not much time left, not much--

The man rounded the stone after her. A faint burning smell rose from the hide armor strapped to his chest, but that had only served to make him angry. His teeth were bared, his eyes wide and wild.

She raised her staff to blast him. Lightning this time, she told herself. She felt the spark in the air, tasted the tang of iron, but then  _ nothing. _ A sensation like being hollowed out ripped through her, her insides scraped raw. She scrambled back, staying on her feet, gasping. Seconds before he figured it out. Not even that--

The flicker of recognition in his eyes. What mage didn’t know the feeling? He gathered something nasty in his staff. 

She heard, “ _ Hawke!” _

She swung the staff. It was metal, after all, and solid. Caught the end of the slaver’s, knocked the spell off course, and the sand next to her left boot exploded.

_ “Hawke!”  _ again. Not a warning, not sharp enough for that. Which meant that she didn’t need to waste the energy looking for him, making eye contact, seeing that he was covered in blood that clearly wasn’t his own, his markings glowing through it so that he looked like nothing short of magic itself--

But she did waste the energy. Then she turned back to the slaver, who was also distracted by the sight of her lover-who-was-glowing, and she brought the end of her staff into his temple so hard he staggered. And again, before he could recover, and again, and again, and he hit the sand, and she dropped the staff, and the world flickered at the edges.

She dropped to her knees, driving her poleyns into her kneecaps. She caught herself on her hands. She heard “ _ Hawke.”  _ again and the glow drew nearer. The uncovered palm of his hand dropped into her field of view, clapping over her fingers where they peeked out of her gloves. She felt the rush as he poured the mana he had into her, heard him suck in a breath through his teeth as he felt it go. Then the world was very solid again, and she was simply on all fours in the sand, a man simply dead in front of her, Fenris simply holding her hand.

“Are you--”

“Fine now,” she gasped. Her staff had blood on it. A lot of it. 

“Good. We need to free the captives.”


End file.
